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Do you think getting a passport is your right as a U.S. citizen? Think again. A passport is an essential international document that both identifies you by name and photograph and affirms that you are a citizen of the United States. But you can get that essential document only if you jump through the official hoops including paying a substantial fee, and even then your right to get it is not absolute. Under U.S. law, the State Department must deny a passport to some individuals and has the discretion to deny a passport to many others.

Your "Right" to a Passport

A passport isn't like a birth certificate that comes into being without any affirmative action on your part. Anyone who has ever applied for a passport can testify to the complexity of the initial application process, which requires considerable documentation plus a personal appearance at a Passport Acceptance Center. The fee cannot be called negligible, nor is the result immediate. Unless you shell out additional fees, you'll have to wait four to six weeks to get your passport in the mail.

Given this, it is difficult to argue that having a passport is a citizen's right. If your passport photo is too dark or you forget your check book, your application stalls. And even if you manage to get the application, documentation, photo and check done perfectly, you still may be denied a passport.

Automatic Denial

Both a particular criminal history and certain financial circumstances make you ineligible to get a U.S. passport. A passport application will be automatically denied if any of these are part of a person's history.

If someone has been convicted of a felony for an international drug crime, the law forbids the State Department from issuing him a passport. In this kind of crime involving international drug trafficking, the person crossed international borders in the commission of the crime.

You are also legally ineligible for a passport if you owe $2,500 or more in back child support. The state child support agency certifies the arrears to the Department of Health and Human Services. The State Department relies on the HHS database.

Finally, the law precludes you from receiving a passport if you owe the federal government money for repatriation for yourself and your family. This "repatriation" occurs if you find yourself overseas without resources to get home and ask the consulate or embassy to get you back to the United States. This is considered a loan that must be repaid.

Discretionary Denial

The State Department has discretion to deny you a passport in many different circumstances, among them the reasons listed here.

The Department can refuse to give a passport to someone with a criminal history that includes a felony conviction. Felony arrest warrants and/or court orders not to leave the country can justify disqualification of a passport application. So can being the subject of a request for extradition from a foreign country.

The State Department can also deny a passport to someone judged incompetent or committed to a mental institution. It can deny passport for a minor if only one parent appears at the interview and does not provide a notarized statement of consent from the other parent.

References

About the Author

Teo Spengler was born in central Alaska and has been traveling ever since. A freelance writer with an MA in English and MFA in Creative writing, she's written travel pieces for S.F.Gate, Fairmont Hotels, IHS Hotels, Jet Blue, Choice Hotels, Women of Green, eHow, Arizona Central and USA Today, among others. She has lived one the East Coast and the West, as well as Mexico, Switzerland, Italy and France. She and currently splits her time between San Francisco and France's Basque Country.

Leaf Group is a USA TODAY content partner providing general travel information. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

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